Nothing has quite prepared me for the chaos of living and working inside a house we're trying to renovate. If you follow my instagram you'll have seen that last week, work began on our Kitchen Diner renovation – a pretty big transformation which will require a wall being knocked down, a kitchen being moved, new electrics, plumbing and all the rest of the things which will make the house habitable again [see our plans for it here].
I work from home, I run 2 businesses (including this blog) and I have a part time job working remotely which I've always made great progress with day to day in what was my peaceful little office at No. 42. My plan when work to the kitchen diner started was... well... to just grin and bear it for 6 weeks. I knew it would be disruptive, but I hadn't quite anticipated just how bad it would be now that I'm living and working in a dusty, noisy building site with the feeling of nowhere sane to escape to, every single day.
There's mess everywhere. The drilling in one room has caused cracks in the brand new plaster in another. I can't find anything I need with it all being stashed in an unorganised mess in the spare room. And no matter how much cleaning I do, two minutes later another layer of dust settles on the same spot I wiped down.
"Have we done the right thing?"
"Will it all look OK when it's complete?"
"Will we go over budget? What even is our budget? Have I recorded everything we've spent so far? Will our money stretch? How much is left?"
I hope these anxious thoughts will silence once the project draws to an end, but if this is me at one week in, I don't want to meet myself in 2 weeks time, haha!
So yeah, rant-filled post and a cry for help here. If anyone has any advice for living, working and managing a home renovation I would love to hear your experience and how you dealt with the ups and downs.